“That’s right,” said the young fisherman, “open your eyes—open them wide! It’s nobody but me. I wouldn’t tell another soul, for I know you wouldn’t want the mischief of a fuss made over it. But how did you come to pitch over?”
“I did not come to pitch over,” said Mell, bewildered, “did I?”
“Of course you did! I had been looking for you for ever so long, and standing on top there, I happened to look down, and saw you lying here. And you never will know how scared I was, for, at first, I thought you were dead. Gad, didn’t I make tracks, though, after I got started! But, drink a little more of this, and now, don’t you feel set up again?”
“Considerably so,” said Mell, trying, too, to look set up. He was so kind, and she, poor, bruised thing, so grateful. This little word, kind, so often upon the lip—upon yours and mine, and the lips of our friends, as we encounter them socially on our pilgrimage day by day, is only at certain epochs in our own lives fully understood, and deservedly cherished deep down in the heart. And yet, so few of us can be great, and so many of us could be kind if we would, and oftener than we are.
“I know just why you toppled,” proceeded Mell’s kind rescuer.
“But I didn’t topple!” again protested Mell.
“Did you fall down on purpose?”
“No. I did not fall at all, as far as I know.”
“Exactly! those are the worst kind—the falls you can’t tell anything about.”
So they are. Her’s had not been far in space—she remembered it all now, with an acute pang—but, oh, so far in spirit!